Mount Everest


Mount Everest is Earth's highest mountain above sea level. It lies in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas and marks part of the China–Nepal border at its summit. Its height was most recently measured in 2020 by Chinese and Nepali authorities as.
Mount Everest attracts many climbers, including highly experienced mountaineers. There are two main climbing routes, one approaching the summit from the southeast in Nepal and the other from the north in Tibet. While not posing substantial technical climbing challenges on the standard route, Everest presents dangers such as altitude sickness, weather, and wind, as well as hazards from avalanches and the Khumbu Icefall. As of May 2024, 340 people have died on Everest. Over 200 bodies remain on the mountain and have not been removed due to the dangerous conditions.
Climbers typically ascend only part of Mount Everest's elevation, as the mountain's full elevation is measured from the geoid, which approximates sea level. The closest sea to Mount Everest's summit is the Bay of Bengal, almost away. To approximate a climb of the entire height of Mount Everest, one would need to start from this coastline, a feat accomplished by Tim Macartney-Snape's team in 1990. Climbers usually begin their ascent from base camps above. The amount of elevation climbed from below these camps varies. On the Tibetan side, most climbers drive directly to the North Base Camp. On the Nepalese side, climbers generally fly into Kathmandu, then Lukla, and trek to the South Base Camp, making the climb from Lukla to the summit about in elevation gain.
The first recorded efforts to reach Everest's summit were made by British mountaineers. As Nepal did not allow foreigners to enter the country at the time, the British made several attempts on the North Ridge route from the Tibetan side. After the first reconnaissance expedition by the British in 1921 reached on the North Col, the 1922 expedition on its first summit attempt marked the first time a human had climbed above and it also pushed the North Ridge route up to. On the 1924 expedition George Mallory and Andrew Irvine made a final summit attempt on 8 June but never returned, leading to debate as to whether they were the first to reach the top. Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary made the first documented ascent of Everest in 1953, using the Southeast Ridge route. Norgay had reached the previous year as a member of the 1952 Swiss expedition. The Chinese mountaineering team of Wang Fuzhou, Gonpo, and Qu Yinhua made the first reported ascent of the peak from the North Ridge on 25 May 1960.

Name

Mount Everest's Nepali/Sanskrit name is Sagarmāthā or Sagar-Matha, which means "the head in the great blue sky", being derived from सगर, meaning "sky", and माथा, meaning "head".
The Tibetan name for Everest is Qomolangma. The name was first recorded in the 1721 Kangxi Atlas, issued during the reign of Qing Emperor Kangxi; it first appeared in the West in 1733 as Tchoumour Lancma, on a map prepared by the French geographer D'Anville and based on Kangxi Atlas. The Tibetan name is also popularly romanised as Chomolungma and as Jo-mo-glang-ma.
The official Chinese transcription is or Zhūmùlǎngmǎ Fēng in pinyin. It is a phonetic transcription of the Tibetan name into Standard Mandarin. While other Chinese names have been used historically, including Shèngmǔ Fēng lit. "holy mother peak"), these names were largely phased out after the Chinese Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a decree to adopt a sole name in May 1952.
The British geographic survey of 1849 attempted to preserve local names when possible. However, Andrew Waugh, the British Surveyor General of India, claimed that he could not find a commonly used local name, and that his search for one had been hampered by the Nepalese and Tibetan policy of exclusion of foreigners. Waugh argued that – because there were many local names – it would be difficult to favour one name over all others; he therefore decided that Peak XV should be named after British surveyor Sir George Everest, his predecessor as Surveyor General of India. Everest himself opposed the honour, and told the Royal Geographical Society in 1857 that "Everest" could neither be written in Hindi nor pronounced by "the native of India". Despite Everest's objections, Waugh's proposed name prevailed, and the Royal Geographical Society officially adopted the name "Mount Everest" in 1865. The modern pronunciation of Everest is different from Sir George's pronunciation of his surname.
In the late 19th century, many European cartographers incorrectly believed that a native name for the mountain was Gaurishankar, a mountain between Kathmandu and Everest.

Other names

  • "Peak XV"
  • "Deodungha"
  • "Gauri Shankar", "Gaurishankar", or "Gaurisankar"

    Surveys

19th century

In 1802, the British began the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India to fix, among other things, the locations, heights, and names of the world's highest mountains. Starting in southern India, the survey teams moved northward using giant theodolites, each weighing and requiring 12 men to carry, to measure heights as accurately as possible. They reached the Himalayan foothills by the 1830s, but Nepal was unwilling to allow the British to enter the country due to suspicions of their intentions. Several requests by the surveyors to enter Nepal were denied.
The British were forced to continue their observations from Terai, a region south of Nepal which is parallel to the Himalayas. Conditions in Terai were difficult because of torrential rains and malaria. Three survey officers died from malaria while two others had to retire because of failing health.
Nonetheless, in 1847, the British continued the survey and began detailed observations of the Himalayan peaks from observation stations up to distant. Weather restricted work to the last three months of the year. In November 1847, Andrew Scott Waugh, the British Surveyor General of India, made several observations from the Sawajpore station at the east end of the Himalayas. Kangchenjunga was then considered the highest peak in the world, and with interest, he noted a peak beyond it, about away. John Armstrong, one of Waugh's subordinates, also saw the peak from a site farther west and called it peak "b". Waugh would later write that the observations indicated that peak "b" was higher than Kangchenjunga, but closer observations were required for verification. The following year, Waugh sent a survey official back to Terai to make closer observations of peak "b", but clouds thwarted his attempts.
In 1849, Waugh dispatched James Nicolson to the area, who made two observations from Jirol, away. Nicolson then took the largest theodolite and headed east, obtaining over 30 observations from five different locations, with the closest being from the peak.
Nicolson retreated to Patna on the Ganges to perform the necessary calculations based on his observations. His raw data gave an average height of for peak "b", but this did not consider light refraction, which distorts heights. However, the number clearly indicated that peak "b" was higher than Kangchenjunga. Nicolson contracted malaria and was forced to return home without finishing his calculations. Michael Hennessy, one of Waugh's assistants, had begun designating peaks based on Roman numerals, with Kangchenjunga named Peak IX. Peak "b" now became known as Peak XV.
In 1852, stationed at the survey headquarters in Dehradun, Radhanath Sikdar, an Indian mathematician and surveyor from Bengal was the first to identify Everest as the world's highest peak, using trigonometric calculations based on Nicolson's measurements. An official announcement that Peak XV was the highest was delayed for several years as the calculations were repeatedly verified. Waugh began work on Nicolson's data in 1854, and along with his staff spent almost two years working on the numbers, having to deal with the problems of light refraction, barometric pressure, and temperature over the vast distances of the observations. Finally, in March 1856 he announced his findings in a letter to his deputy in Calcutta. Kangchenjunga was declared to be, while Peak XV was given the height of. Waugh concluded that Peak XV was "most probably the highest in the world". Peak XV was calculated to be exactly high, but was publicly declared to be in order to avoid the impression that an exact height of 29000 ft was nothing more than a rounded estimate. Waugh is sometimes playfully credited with being "the first person to put two feet on top of Mount Everest".

20th century

In 1856, Andrew Waugh announced Everest as high, after several years of calculations based on observations made by the Great Trigonometrical Survey.
From 1952 to 1954, the Survey of India, using triangulation methods, determined that the height of Everest was. In 1975 it was subsequently reaffirmed by a Chinese measurement of. In both cases the snow cap, not the rock head, was measured.
The height given was officially recognised by Nepal and China. Nepal planned a new survey in 2019 to determine if the April 2015 Nepal earthquake affected the height of the mountain.
In May 1999, an American Everest expedition directed by Bradford Washburn anchored a GPS unit into the highest bedrock. A rock head elevation of, and a snow/ice elevation higher, were obtained via this device. Although as of 2001, it has not been officially recognised by Nepal, this figure is widely quoted. Geoid uncertainty casts doubt upon the accuracy claimed by both the 1999 and 2005 surveys.
In 1955, a detailed photogrammetric map of the Khumbu region, including the south side of Mount Everest, was made by Erwin Schneider as part of the 1955 International Himalayan Expedition, which also attempted Lhotse.
In the late 1980s, an even more detailed topographic map of the Everest area was made under the direction of Bradford Washburn, using extensive aerial photography.